Fire department recruits find it hard to buy houses.

Karen Myrick thought she found the ideal job. Myrick, 55, a financial clerk for the small Florida Panhandle town of Havana, was interested in the job of financial director for the Bonita Springs Fire Control and Rescue District. The pay range is $52,794 to $57,593, which is not bad considering Lee County's median family income is $54,100 a year.She said she wanted the job so she could be near her son and his family in Fort Myers.But she said she had to turn down the job because she couldn't afford a house.
Her case is indicative of problems local fire departments and other agencies are having in hiring qualified people such as Myrick because of the escalating cost of real estate in the high-growth areas of south Lee County and North Naples.Applicants are either rejecting the jobs outright, like she did, or taking innovative approaches to find homes.
Some firefighters chip in to buy houses together, or they rent space from more fortunate roommates who bought homes a few years ago before the housing market spiked.With the median price of an existing house in Lee County at $289,700 and in Collier County at $500,800, firefighters and other professionals making $40,000 to $60,000 are having a tough time finding homes."It's the key challenge we have right now in Southwest Florida," said Lee Building Industry Association executive Vice President Michael Reitmann.
Although the wages are competitive for this area, housing prices have outpaced pay scales."You just can't continue to raise salaries and
High real estate costs force many candidates to decline;others double up in homes so they can share the rent make it work," San Carlos Fire Chief Nat Ippolito said.
The problem has overwhelmed local government.Although affordable housing programs exist in Lee and Collier counties, there is a 30,000-unit deficit of such housing in each county.
Hit especially hard are young firefighters, especially those making in the $40,000 range."We really don't reach out to the moderate income households like we should," said Gloria Sagjo, a county planner.
So "if you were just moving here, what would you do? I don't know how you could afford it," said Roger Shelley, assistant fire chief with the Bonita Springs Fire Control and Rescue District.Consider Myrick. The median existing house price in Havana is about $100,000, she said.Myrick said she's a little better off than most.
"I could sell my 3,000-square foot house on 4 acres for $325,000 to $350,000, but what could I buy there, a small condo?" she said.By comparison, Shelley said he recently sold his older three-bedroom, two-bath wood-frame house with no garage on a standard lot in Bonita Springs for $315,000.
Entry-level Bonita firefighters who start at $44,600 annually will have an even tougher time finding housing, said department Chief Dan Gourley, who is faced with trying to hire a dozen more firefighters in February.In San Carlos Park, existing home prices have soared from $120,000 to $300,000 in less than two years, making it hard for his young firefighters to find places to live, Ippolito said.Firefighter Brad Altstatt, 24, a graduate of Estero High School, is in that housing predicament.
Earning $42,500 a year, he said he's renting space for $350 a month plus utilities from a friend who bought a house in San Carlos Park a few years ago.Ippolito said he may have a tough time hiring the six to nine more firefighters he needs during the next three months.
"All I can do is hope and try," he said.In North Naples in pricey Collier County, the problem is even worse.As a rule of thumb, a person can afford to buy a house that is three times his or her annual salary, said Cormac Giblin, county director of housing and grants. That means a starting firefighter earning upward of $40,000 annually to a fire department finance director earning $55,000 would be able to buy a house between $120,000 and $165,000.
Last month, there were no homes for sale in the county from under $100,000 to $199,000, Giblin said. He said there were only seven existing houses for sale between $200,000 and $250,000.North Naples Firefighter Eloy Ricardo said when he joined the department five years ago, he had to go in with another firefighter to rent an apartment in Golden Gate for $900 a month.
"We literally slept on the carpet because we couldn't afford furniture," Ricardo said. He said rent has since escalated to $1,300 a month.North Naples Firefighter Javier Spirgatis, who has been with the agency for 21Ú2 years, said he was fortunate, with his parents' help, to buy a condominium apartment in south Lee County for $113,500. And another firefighter, Adrian Martinez, rents from him to help make the mortgage payments. Spirgatis said the value of his condo is now $200,000.Local governments are planning new initiatives to help fill the work-force housing void.
In Bonita Springs, the city owns 16 acres where 65 homes priced at $180,000 to $200,000 could be built, Mayor Jay Arend said.The plan would be to sell the property to a developer who would build the houses and lease the lots to the home owners to keep unit prices down, the mayor said. He said construction could start in a year if everything falls into place.
City officials are also considering charging a fee on new homes of $500,000 or more to raise $4 million a year to Bonita's affordable housing trust fund.The city will have $1.14 million in the fund by the end of the year. Some of the money is being used to pay for streets and drainage in the 40-home Renaissance at the Rosemary community.The Bonita Springs Area Housing Development Corp. is building 20 three- and four-bedroom houses for $180,000 each, said Mary Sorge, executive director. Three other subdivisions, with 71 lots, are planned, she said.
Lee County has earmarked $1 million to create a community land trust program to help create more affordable housing.In Collier County, some developers are pledging to build a certain number of units in the work force housing price range of up to $210,000 or donating cash to the county's work force housing trust fund.
The county could used the money to build streets, water and sewer lines and other infrastructure to hold down housing costs, Giblin said.